The Scorpion Game

by Daniel Jeffries

  “Get in here, Detective,” said the Captain to Hoskin.

  Quinlin was leaning against the wall with his arms crossed. He didn’t make eye contact.

  “I’m guessing we’re not all here for an office party,” said Quinlin.

  “Shut up, Quinlin,” said the Captain, her eyes on fire.

  “Detective Hoskin,” said the Chief. “Clarenza says we can count on you. I hope she’s right.” He was a tall, imposing posthuman, his naturally armored body bright blue and studded with sensors. His “face” displayed a series of symbols that moved and changed when he spoke. He was in full dress blacks, medals glowing on his chest.

  “I want this case wrapped up yesterday,” said the Chief.

  The Captain looked exhausted. “Chief, I’ve told you my people can handle this. We don’t need any—”

  “Clarenza, I don’t want to hear any of this petty cop territorial bullshit, so save it for someone who gives a shit,” said the Chief. “If I have to bring twenty people in here and shove them down your throat I will. I don’t care what it takes.” He turned to Hoskin. “Detective, have you seen the video that is all over the nets?”

  “Yeah,” said Hoskin.

  “All right,” said the Chief. “So you know what we’ve got here is a nightmare. I want this done and gone. You’ve been on the case since the jump. What do you know?”

  “Two murders. The Senator and Gilead. Blackboxes destroyed. Offsite backups hacked. Our original thought was it looked mob related,” said Hoskin. “Obviously the video changes things. We’re looking for an ideological killer. He may have others working with him, some kind of cult leader. Probably thinks of himself as some kind of hero. A freedom fighter. And he’s trying to rally more people to his cause.”

  “And so you’re telling us you know nothing,” said the man in the gray suit.

  The man stood stiffly, his hands behind his back, his feet shoulder width apart. The way he stood was a classic “at ease” pose and Hoskin figured him for ex-military. His suit was crisply pressed, his face clean shaven and his hair close cropped. In the corner of his left eye he saw a tiny logo that glowed gently in the low light of the office. Hoskin guessed they weren’t bought with a public servant’s salary. He probably came from money.

  “No, I’m not telling you that,” said Hoskin. “And who are you exactly?”

  “I brought him,” said the fat man with the jewel crusted fingers. His security, dressed in all white and surrounded by energy cocoons, moved aside so everyone could see him. The man sat with his hands folded tightly inside his protective energy bubble. The chair was too small for him.

  “My name is Michael Anton Childress of the Childress ‘dynasty’ though I hate that word. It’s words like that that make the people hate us. And maybe rightly so.”

  “All right, Mr. Childress. Who is he?” said Hoskin.

  “He’s my close friend from Central Investigation and Intelligence, and I’ve brought him in to assist with the hunt,” said Childress.

  “CII Senior Investigator Gideon Daniels,” said the man himself. “Here to assist.”

  “That’s great,” said Hoskin. “Don’t need any assistance from the CII.”

  “It looks to me like you do, since all you’ve got right now is some guesses.”

  For a moment Hoskin saw Daniels’ face flicker strangely. Lack of sleep was getting to him, but he fought it back, ignored it. He spawned a fully body scan to check again for damage or residual effects from the drugs Sakura slipped him. He resisted using a vSelf. They were clean, hard to tamper with, so they might spot deviations faster, but he suspected using them too much might just fragment the mind a little over time.

  He noticed Daniels had a slightly elongated head: another Leptic like the kid he saw earlier. Someone who didn’t need sleep might be useful. The man had the flawless look of the wealthy, his skin perfect and gently tanned, his body ideally proportioned. The rich could eat whatever they wanted, because their immune system mites relentlessly hunted down cholesterol and free radicals and chewed up extra fat.

  “That’s enough,” said the Chief. “You’ll work together and you’ll like it.”

  “Tell me, Detective Hoskin,” said Childress. “Do you believe the rich deserve to die and that the killer is right to come after us?”

  “No. I believe the killer suffers from a child’s sense of justice, a black and white justice. The real world is filled with shades of gray.”

  “Hmm. Sometimes I think he is right to kill us. Nevertheless, I still have no desire to die.”

  The Chief turned to Hoskin. “You’ll work with Investigator Daniels and report back directly to me. But if I don’t have results soon I’m pulling you off this and putting a hundred people on it.”

  The Captain fumed quietly.

  “And we need to get started right away,” said Daniels. “We have a third murder.”

  “What?” said Hoskin.

  “We have a third murder that has yet to be reported or covered by the media.”

  “Who? When?”

  “My son,” said Childress, softly, his voice wavering. “This…morning.” He didn’t look up.

  “I’m sorry,” said Hoskin. “Can he be relifed?”

  Childress sat for a moment and then shook his head.

  “No,” said Daniels. “His blackbox was taken and his offsite backups destroyed.”

  “Right. Take us to it,” said Hoskin.

  The Illusionist

  2458 Orthodox Western Calendar

  5156 Universal Chinese Calendar, Year of the Dragon

  The Starliner Swiss Phoenix, outside Snowstorm Clan Roving Starship Settlement

  Just months before the Oligarch murders started, Venadrik looked out into space from the deck of the Starliner Swiss Phoenix. The No-Glass surrounding the deck made it seem as if he stood completely naked to the vacuum of space. They were far enough out now that he could see all of the Snowstorm Clan Roving Starship Settlement. It looked like a growth drifting in space, a giant, pulpy elongated tube, not smooth and streamlined like the starships of old, when men built instead of grew them. Dense layers of exotic matter fields held it all together, powerful enough to contain its microsun without erupting under its intense heat.

  To Venadrik it looked like a cancer, growing incessantly, invading every cell and twisting it. The titanic starship grew larger almost daily and every time Venadrik sailed out into space he could see new parts gestating around it.

  Disgusting…diseased. He despised it. He wanted to see it burning slowly. Burned clean. He rubbed his forearms.

  My blood is acid. My face is fire.

  All around him, unseen voices whispered and shouted, all of them running together. He listened quietly as the fragments of thoughts drifted in on the wind.

  The eyes…all of it…and then there’s me again…ignite the hatred…the parasites… I was a brilliant cosmic bird and now I’m horses falling from the heavens…let them do the work for us…nobody knows…find her... in my head, guitars, hundreds and then a billion...explosion like the radiant sundance…yes, you want to still…the fanatics… and him too a problem…how does she keep slipping?…and the push, they just need another push…

  Venadrik pulled his mind together.

  On his innervision, he could see his crypt crackers were close to a breakthrough with the blackboxes. His mites had slithered into so many minds. His arrays had ground away at them for twenty years, ripping away layer after layer of encryption. It took so much patience. Soon he would tear open their minds and steal their memories. He’d know every secret they’d ever kept from their wives or children or friends.

  “Beautiful isn’t it?” said a voice behind him.

  Venadrik jumped at the unexpected voice. He got himself together, turned and smiled winningly. “Absolutely gorgeous.”

  And horrifying and hideous…and everything’s desiccated and dying with me…

  Stay together…s
tay together…

  He was playing a necessary character today: Casteggio, self-made businessman and friend to the elite. His beard was elegantly styled and pointed. His diamond glasses richly augmented his leisure toga.

  “I’ve seen it grow over a hundred years and I’ve never gotten tired of it,” said Gabriel Gilead, the gentle light of the deck’s glowglobes reflecting off his gold burnished skin. He wore a flowing silk evening robe of bright purple.

  “It’s stunning, like some living art masterpiece,” said Venadrik, knowing Gilead was an ancient art scholar and collector. The halls of his Starliner and orbital mansion overflowed with some of the greatest works ever created.

  Gilead joined Venadrik by the guard rail. For a moment he didn’t move, and his golden skin made him look like a statue.

  “This is still my favorite spot,” said Gilead. “It makes everything I’ve ever worked for, everything I have to do — almost worth it. If only for a moment.”

  “I know. I love to walk out here at night. Cleanses the mind,” said Venadrik.

  Venadrik breathed in the cool night air. The Starliner’s creators had added an artificial night breeze to enhance the illusion of openness on the deck and even an array of smells that shifted according to the Starliner’s whims. Tonight Venadrik could smell a hint of the salty sea on the wind, though there wasn’t a beach for thousands and thousands of miles. The two men said nothing for a few minutes, but Venadrik knew why Gilead had come.

  “How long have we known each other?” said Gilead.

  “Over twenty years,” said Venadrik.

  “You know there’s nobody else I can trust. How many people can I talk to? There’s you and…I don’t know…Certainly none of my children. No one in the family. Not my wives. My God, never my wives, no matter how many I get. The latest one, Caressa, just got religion, keeps babbling on about the fucking Prophet Amadeo. If she keeps at it I’ll throw her back out into the streets where I got her.”

  “The only thing religion is good for is manipulating the weak,” said Venadrik. “But what do you expect? Nobody understands things the way we do. They can’t see the whole picture. Even if the idiots were listening to us right now, they wouldn’t understand what’s going on.”

  Venadrik ran his fingertips along the brass rail and smiled. His diamond rings sparkled.

  “Most people have no self-awareness,” said Gilead.

  Like you…like you…like you…the electric floodlight words have gone from me…eat his eyes…

  “There’s something else though,” said Venadrik. “You didn’t come up here to talk philosophy again. Tell me.”

  Venadrik already knew the problem. The other families had banded together, driven by his whispers that Gilead would raise all their prices, bleeding them out. Gilead possessed a near monopoly on shipping, his commercial Tanglenet dwarfing every other network on the Big Forty. Only Gilead’s massive Tangleport network and the ships that flowed through them could move the goods too large for synthing at home. Only they could move the He-3 critical to modern energy. They told him that if he didn’t lower his prices to ship their He-3, they would band together and build their own port network. Without their He-3, his network would stand half unused.

  The rich…they’re all afraid of losing their money...that’s the answer…kill them with their own fears…

  “The other families—” said Gilead.

  “I know already. And I have the answer,” said Venadrik.

  “And what’s that?”

  “Cut their throats. Stop all shipments of He-3. All of them. All at once. Don’t let them ship anything. Starve them out.”

  Gilead looked at him. “And do their work for them?”

  “No. They can’t survive without you. They’d go down faster. You’d still fill half your ships with other products, enough to keep the credit flowing. They’d have no He-3 moving. It would crush them. And when they collapsed you could buy out their broken shells.”

  “And put half the universe out of work?” said Gilead. “Tear everything apart? We’re talking 90% of all energy shipments in some places.”

  “They’re parasites anyway. All of the little people. Wanting everything free. Haven’t you always said that? ”

  “I don’t know. I mean, yes, I said that, but this is different.”

  “How? This is your business, your life, your money. And they’re trying to take it from you. They could take it all, leave you with nothing. You’re back down below, living with the filth, the little people.”

  Gilead looked shaken. He stared out into space. Venadrik said nothing for a moment.

  “All right,” said Gilead. “And I might just crush the unions while I’m at it. Get costs down to something real again.”

  “Exactly. Break them all. And when you buy out the broken shells of their fortunes, you’ll put everyone back to work, be a hero. A champion of the people. Sometimes a God has to crush insects to build worlds.”

  Gilead nodded thoughtfully. Venadrik could see his words had taken root, like a virus finally breaking through the body’s defenses.

  ***

  At dinner, Venadrik wondered if he could keep it together. Sometimes, when he was playing a role, he wanted to just tear out his eyes and scream, “I hate you all, I hate every last one of you. It’s a mask. It’s all a mask, can’t you see it?”

  He was having trouble smiling with his eyes. He knew the people at the table weren’t smart enough to see it, though. They saw what they wanted to.

  One of the Gilead matrons was prattling on. He’d lost track of what she was saying, but it didn’t matter. He just kept nodding and smiling and she just kept right on talking, completely oblivious. He couldn’t remember her name or rank. It was certainly high, since only about forty people from the family were invited on the cruise.

  It was impossible to keep track of the Dynasty family trees anyway. Gilead had fifty-five children and hundreds of clones and cousins and brothers and sisters, spreading like fungus over the galaxy. All of them held a rank in the family, and all of them owned a piece of a sprawling fortune that touched almost every industry. The Gilead dynasty owned companies on all of the Big Forty planets and on most of the roving starship settlements.

  Venadrik ate a bite of perfectly prepared venison and took another sip of wine from his diamond goblet. He looked around at the foods piled high on the huge table and watched the old fashioned servos made of all brass and wearing white gloves bring more and more. More and more waste. Most of it would go uneaten.

  Hovering music spheres floated over the table. Gnarled jewel trees sprouted from carefully crafted spots in the floor, the branches dripping with rubies and emeralds you could pluck like fruit. A wine caddy with gossamer wings that glittered moved hypnotically from place to place, pouring wine as needed. A diamond chandelier hung over the center of the table, suspended by nothing.

  The wine flowed. People talked and talked. Venadrik had trouble holding on. He started to hallucinate numbers again. Over the years he’d found when he began to lose control of his emotions, the numbers started to flow again, like they did back when he was little: gold sevens, blue nines, green fifteens, black sixes, all streaming together, forming shapes. The more the Gilead matron rambled the more the numbers dipped and swirled. He wanted to stand up and stab the old woman in the eyes.

  She didn’t look old, of course. She had the body of a thirty-three year old. For all he knew, she could be four hundred. She’d probably chosen a thirty-year-old’s body to distinguish herself from the younger Dynasty princesses. He looked into her eyes and saw nothing. Her hair was spun with silver and ruby and studded with living orchids that had been spliced to grow with jeweled petals.

  Just as he thought he might actually stand up and bite the woman’s face, just to shut her up, an encrypted message pinged his backbrain. He took another bite of venison and let the message uncurl across his innervision. An image of a young girl bound to a tree sprang
from the message pack and a soft voice whispered, “Punish me.” A moment later the image evaporated, the whisper turning to a giggle. The little note released a chemical as it died that told his brain someone was tickling under his balls before the sensation slipped away. Venadrik licked his lips. He took a sip of wine and looked around the table to see where the message had come from.

  Just across from him, several people were wrapped in conversation, but one of the youngest Gilead princesses was looking at him. There. She was probably a first-lifer. First-life daughters of the plutocracy were notoriously forward and experimental. He’d fucked a number of them, including a few of the Gilead girls. One of them must have told this girl about him.

  She smiled and fluttered her diamond dusted lashes. Her lips were flecked with specks of ruby. She wore a black choker with a holographic brooch of a Deos saint, black-lace gloves, a baby-doll dress and a triangle pendant that pointed directly to her perfectly plump cleavage. Her hair was flowing and silver and she’d tied up part of it in pigtails, using copper rivulets strung with tiny skulls with glittering, gem-filled eyes.

  Venadrik nodded slightly to her. She brushed her silver hair back from her face and giggled. One of the older women caught it and looked at her with vicious eyes, and she looked away.

  He’d find her later, but for now he felt calm again. He smiled with his eyes this time and knew he could listen to this insipid bitch for as long as she wanted to run her mouth.

  ***

  When the three hour dinner finally finished, the girl flashed him again. Venadrik flashed her the way to his room as a 3D map in her mind. She flashed her scent and he drank it in before wiping the map away. She would have to wait. Gilead wanted to go up to the deck with him and a few of the other men for cigars and brandy. He went.

  It was another hour of talking and drinking and smoking. Venadrik had trouble listening. The hunger was building. He could feel it in his throat. His temples were beating in time to the pulsing rhythm of his blood. His mouth was dry and felt like it was stuffed with cotton. He kept licking his lips to keep them wet. His mind drifted and his senses short-circuited as he thought about how he would break the girl.